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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27599924">Bright Eyes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pickwick12/pseuds/Pickwick12'>Pickwick12</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Prodigal Son (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Brightwell, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:49:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,910</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27599924</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pickwick12/pseuds/Pickwick12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Slowburn Brightwell<br/>Rated T to be safe for anything in the show.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Malcolm Bright &amp; Dani Powell, Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>106</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Equilibrium</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“I just want you to know, you’re not the only one with baggage. We bring it here, we set it down, and we do our job."</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He didn’t look like the usual IA type, which was more lawyer than cop, so slick they looked like they could slide on the floor. He looked, on first impression, like the real thing. A real cop with calloused hands and imperfect hair and kind eyes. She wondered if he’d come to fire her, if they’d given the final deed to somebody who was actually nice. </p><p>“Officer Powell?”</p><p>“That’s me,” she answered, motioning him to sit down in the one chair beside her narrow bed, which she sat on opposite him. She was used to these meetings by now, or so she thought.</p><p>“How are you? You look well.”</p><p>His tone was sincere, almost fatherly. It didn’t have the hungry piranha feeling of the endless stream of IA and Legal reps who had been by to pump her, ostensibly to try to figure out exactly what wording to use to terminate her without being sued. </p><p>“I’m getting better,” she answered, which was true. </p><p>“My name is Gil Arroyo,” he said. I’m putting together a complex homicide team, and I’m here to ask you to consider being part of it.”</p><p>Dani was so surprised that she didn’t answer. In a moment, he continued, “I’m sorry to impose on you while you’re still in recovery, but the boss is asking me to finalize my list of names. If you’re interested, you wouldn’t need to start until you’re fully cleared for duty.”</p><p>The idea that her visitor might be bringing a job offer had never crossed Dani’s mind. She half wondered if it was a weird prank. “I’m sure your boss would love signing off on an unstable post-undercover failure with substance issues who’s costing the NYPD thousands daily to get better.”</p><p>Arroyo smiled. “Self-pity doesn’t suit you, Officer Powell. What I want him to sign off on is an officer who provided exceptional intel during an unusually high stress assignment and has a record of intelligent detective work. When you’ve done this successfully as long as I have, you can call in a few perks, and one is picking your own people with few questions asked.”</p><p>Dani nodded. “Can I think about it?” She had spent weeks assuming her career was dead and trying to come to terms with it. This felt like having ice cold water splashed in her face. </p><p>“Sure,” he answered. “About a week.” He stood. “You shouldn’t care about the money they’re paying for your recovery. They sent in an officer too young, without enough support, and left her too long. They should be paying.”</p><p>Dani just looked at him. It had been a long time since she’d felt like anything but a failure. Somehow reframing the situation was easier to believe from another cop rather than the therapist she saw daily. </p><p>Arroyo turned to go but then turned back for a second. “If you take this, it will get IA off your back. I’m asking you because I trust that you have too much integrity to say yes to me just for that reason. Only somebody who did would ever have been as honest about their mistakes as you have.”</p><p>“Thank you,” she said, making eye contact just before he left. Respect. That’s what he was conveying. She hadn’t felt that in a long time.</p><p>—<br/>
No more IA dress shoes squeaked their way to her room for the next few days. She slept on the decision, woke up , and still wasn’t sure. It was a great offer, and that was the problem. She no longer felt like a great cop. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to keep going. She’d thought for ages that IA winning would be some kind of relief, like finally slipping under the water and just letting go. Some other career, she was still young.</p><p>But without the constant threat and stress, her mind began to clear. What if she said yes? What if her motivation to recover became putting the badge back on and taking that second chance?</p><p>She called Arroyo after three days. “I don’t know how it’s going to go, but I’m willing to  try.”</p><p>“That’s all I need. Keep me posted, and we’ll see you as soon as you’re cleared.”</p><p>—</p><p>Her intuition was back. It had to be, because as soon as she’d made the decision, it was like her recovery went into overdrive. Her mind was alive again, anticipating. This was exactly what she’d needed.</p><p>Two weeks later, she went home, and two weeks after that, the NYPD psychologist said she could return to work, with therapy and drug tests a permanent part of her life for the foreseeable future. She could deal with that.</p><p>—</p><p>The first morning, Dani woke up two hours earlier than necessary. She made coffee and showered, texted the man she’d met a week prior and gone out with twice. Finally, she gave up and went in early.</p><p>Something about finding Arroyo’s office light on and him already there didn’t surprise her. She wondered if he’d slept there.</p><p>“Officer Powell,” he smiled as soon as he emerged and saw her waiting in the hallway. “I didn’t realize it was time yet.”</p><p>“I’m early,” she answered, following him into his office and taking the seat he indicated across his desk.</p><p>“I never left last night,” he offered, solving that mystery. “I lost my wife a short time ago. Sometimes going home is just too much.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Dani answered.</p><p>Gil nodded. “I just want you to know, you’re not the only one with baggage. We bring it here, we set it down, and we do our job. Sound good?”</p><p>“Sounds good.”</p><p>That was that. That was all the introduction needed. Dani quickly met Lauren, who answered the phones, Edrisa, medical examiner, Levi from IT, and JT, who had worked closely with Gil for a while. Support staff, officers, everybody greeted her like she was another Gil hire, not a disgraced narcotics undercover. It was a fresh start, and it took very little time before she was glad she’d accepted the job. </p><p>As time passed, cases and memories piled on top of Dani’s baggage until that baggage didn’t seem quite as heavy by comparison. Murders solved, laughing at JT’s one liners, Gil’s birthday dinner, planned by Edrisa since he didn’t have anyone to celebrate with at home. </p><p>Within a year, the job felt like home, and Dani felt like a cop again. She left Gil a handwritten letter on his desk to mark the anniversary of the day he’d come to see her in recovery, filled with all the things she couldn’t say. He knew her too well by then to try to talk it out, but when she came in the next morning, he asked if he could give her a hug. She went for it. </p><p>She managed not to relapse. Only another ex-user would fully understand the struggle and the nights with close shaves. But she made it. One year. Two years. Three. Never gone, but taking less and less space in her mind and life.</p><p>And she was good at the job. Even she had to admit it. They were a tight unit, and Gil was a good leader. Equilibrium.</p><p>Until.</p><p>—</p><p>Dani wasn’t surprised when Gil said they needed a profiler. Their cases had gotten progressively more strange and complicated as time went on and Gil’s team earned a reputation in the NYPD as the homocide squad who would take the weird ones. </p><p>At first, they mostly did their own profiles as they went. They weren’t bad at it, at least not at the quick, surface-level profiling needed for the sake of investigating most common homicides. Gil said she and JT were both above average.</p><p>At one time, teenaged Dani had considered becoming a profiler; she’d had the grades for it. She’d quickly realized, however, when she’d researched it, that the thought of synthesizing the information in thousands of books and sitting in an office writing lengthy reports would never thrill her the way more active detection would. </p><p>Gil was something more than a regular cop when it came to these things. She learned to value his intuition about people more and more as the crime scenes got weirder and weirder. Finally, though, he insisted they needed the real thing.</p><p>Glenda was the first, sixty-five, the woman responsible for catching the Burnham Killer. They were her last consult before retirement. Next was Coppenrath, who divided his time between profiling and IA investigations. Dani didn’t care for him much, but he got the job done. </p><p>After a while, they started needing profilers more often than not. One-offs, men and women who came in for a day then sent a profile a week later. Sometimes useful, sometimes not. Dani just accepted it as part of the job. She trusted Gil’s judgment, and having a stranger around for a few hours didn’t hurt the team any. </p><p>The copycat case started normally enough. Dani wasn’t surprised when Gil said he was bringing in a profiler. She did think it was mildly interesting when he said the guy was ex-FBI. Retired, probably. The ones who were good enough to be FBI weren’t consulting with the NYPD, not usually.</p><p>Malcolm Bright was anything but retired.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Blue Marble</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>He was fragile, like a glass marble rolling near the edge of a table.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dani wasn’t big on abstractions and philosophy, but there was something fitting, she would later think, about it all starting wth the two of them holding onto each other for dear life. </p><p>At first, he’d been another profiler like all the others. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. None of the others had eyes so startlingly blue that Dani had caught herself staring. And only a handful of the others had been as intelligent, she had to admit to herself. He was FBI caliber. Of course, it all made sense—the ex-part—when he chopped somebody’s hand off and explained who his father was. </p><p>What surprised Dani most was that Gil was willing to put up with someone so unpredictable. Gil was a creature of routine, and though he could think creatively when a case demanded it, his outward habits rarely shifted. Bright was the opposite of predictable, but Gil kept him close, like an invisible string connected him to the slighter, younger man. If Dani hadn’t known better, her own profile would have said the two were related.</p><p>Maybe their bond went even deeper than that. Her own career, as short and fraught as it had so far been, had taught her that cops could form strong bonds with victims. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did. She could imagine the cop Gil must have been and the child version of Malcolm Bright, how earnest he would have been, how sensitive. Gil, who could never resist anyone who was wounded and needed his help, could never have turned his back on that child. Dani understood, faster than the others did. </p><p>The adult Malcolm wasn’t so different, underneath his energy and frenetic mannerisms. He was fragile, like a glass marble rolling near the edge of a table. That was why Dani had held him. When they asked her why, she just said it was instinct. The truth was, that violent sleep terror hadn’t made her afraid of a grown man. It had made her ache for a little boy.</p><p>On the floor of the precinct, surrounded by cops, two people trusted each other in the most primal way imaginable. Malcolm had awakened and held onto her, just like the lost child she saw looking out from his eyes. And she had let him, keeping him safe until he was calm. It was a strange, intimate thing for two near-strangers to do. </p><p>She would later wonder if her care for Malcolm had started because she’d borrowed Gil’s care and made it her own. She wouldn’t ever quite know, but as she would come to realize, nothing was ever the same after she’d held Malcolm Bright.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Girl in the Badge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Empathy. Nobody asked him why he’d clung to Officer Powell. Plenty of people asked her why she’d held him, but they assumed he’d been too out of his mind to know what he was doing. He hadn’t been, at least not completely. A part of his brain had made a choice based on what he had already deduced.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Profilers should be the most compassionate people in the world, Malcolm had always thought. He'd encountered people who thought what he did was near-magic, mind reading sorcery. He'd known many others who thought he and others like him were merely the beneficiaries of lucky guesses. Of course, the truth lay in the complex weeds between those two extremes. </p><p>What he did and what he knew were the results of years of study, observable details, and a talent for recognizing patterns. Genius talent. He could admit he was a genius, though he did not feel any kind of pride as a result of it. In fact, if he let himself think about it too long, thinking of his own mental prowess would always remind him of his link to the enigmatic, dark genius of Martin Whitly.</p><p>Compassion was, he thought, the natural result of knowing people the way he knew them. The hurts that were immediately apparent from mannerisms, ways of talking, clothing choices, histories—those hurts painted portraits in his mind so he could see people as amalgamations of the damage they’d sustained. The rejection, the grief. And he could not help feeling it with them.</p><p>If Martin Whitly had been his only father, perhaps pain is all he would have ever seen. After all, he had learned to profile his mother before he was fifteen, to ascertain how many drinks she’d had, which pills. </p><p>But Martin Whitly was only one side of the tug-of-war. On the other side was the man who had shown him that people were not just collections of private pain. They could also be made up of warm memories, loyal choices, safe harbors. It was because of Gil Arroyo that he realized every profile had to contain the light in addition to the darkness. He did not tell Gil that he had returned to New York in hopes of reconnecting with him, and he did not know how to tell Gil that he was the one who had made the child Malcolm realize that empathy did not always have to hurt. </p><p>Empathy. Nobody asked him why he’d clung to Officer Powell. Plenty of people asked her why she’d held him, but they assumed he’d been too out of his mind to know what he was doing. He hadn’t been, at least not completely. A part of his brain had made a choice based on what he had already deduced.</p><p>Trust issues. Rejection. Fear of failure. The dark things. He had seen them in her on day one. Nothing twisted or pathological, the kinds of pain most people carried in one form or another. But there was a luminosity in spite of all that. Or, he came to realize quickly, because of it. Dani Powell was the rare person who had transformed pain into empathy. Like him. So little in common, yet the most fundamental thing the same. </p><p>And so he’d clung to her, when most of his brain was on fire, and his instincts had been right. She’d kept hold of him for no sensible reason at all, nothing except pure empathy. </p><p>That night, he’d dreamed—first about the girl in the box, then about Gil searching his father’s basement with a flashlight, and finally about a beautiful woman with dark hair and a lamp. Somehow he knew, the way people know in dreams, that she had come to illuminate the corners of his mind.</p><p>“You really trust Dani, don’t you?” Gil’s question, posed over drinks a week after the copycat case concluded, made sense. Malcolm had never trusted easily. </p><p>“She’s light, Gil. The kind of cop who touches dark things and makes them better.”</p><p>“I know, kid,” Gil answered. </p><p>“Like you,” Malcolm added.</p><p>“I’ll hire you again without the flattery,” Gil joked gently, but he reached over and patted Malcolm’s knee. “I should go. I’ll see you soon, City Boy.”</p><p>Malcolm nodded, waiting while Gil let himself out. “I trust her; she doesn’t trust me yet,” he thought. That was something he would work to fix, but the effort itself, he thought, would be worth it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Cracked Door</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Malcolm knew better than to rush friendship or to expect people to take his issues and digest them all at once. But Dani had opened a crack in a door in his mind that he had kept closed for a long time.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He expected Gil to bring him home if anyone did. Gil was used to his setup, and he was protective. Malcolm hadn’t had that protection during his years away, and, while he’d gotten by, it hadn’t been easy. Being far away from Martin and his family had helped the night terrors lessen, but he’d still had bad nights and no confidence that he could ever bring another person home and into his situation.</p><p>Coming back had opened old wounds and made things worse on one hand, but it had also brought him back into Gil’s proximity. Even though he laughed a little at the fact that Gil didn’t seem to think of him all that much differently in his thirties than he had at ten or eighteen, he actually appreciated the protectiveness and consistency. </p><p>That’s why it was so surprising, even in Malcolm’s sedative-confused state, to hear Gil ask Dani to take him home. Given Gil’s profile, that meant he trusted her to an unusually high degree—not only to get Malcolm there safely, but to be able to handle seeing something of his private life.</p><p>His thoughts were sluggish, but it made sense. Gil would have seen similar things in her to what he had perceived. That didn’t mean, however, that he was free of the shyness bordering on shame that filled him when he was forced to let anyone new into a part of himself that he didn’t enjoy showing. </p><p>He knew It was strange—a perfect life, a space to live in that people would practically die for, everything he could ever want. Except peace. As exemplified by a set of restraints and a mouth guard.</p><p>As Dani entered his space, he felt like she was entering his mind—the part of him that he didn’t share publicly. And he watched her intently.</p><p>“You have a lot of blades.” She wasn’t judgmental, just observant, curious. His answer was to try to keep the mood light, feeling taut, afraid he would, at any moment, sense disapproval or fear. After all, he did have a lot of blades, physically and metaphorically. Internal knife points tied to memories that drew blood whenever they intruded on his consciousness. </p><p>Dani did not express either disapproval or fear. Instead, Malcolm found himself in bed almost immediately, with her helping him into his restraints and smiling down at him like a calming guardian angel.</p><p>He wondered, in the last moments before sleep, if she could see how much he trusted her. Enough to let go of the facade of forced cheerfulness and let her see his weary vulnerability. Enough to let her touch the cold restraints that both protected and imprisoned him. </p><p>He was not lying when he told her that he did not ever sleep next to anyone. For him, that represented even more intimacy than other physical acts—to trust someone enough to let them into his actual life, to trust himself to be with them. To trust that someone could care for him at his most vulnerable, in spite of his complications. </p><p>He believed her when she said she’d seen crazier things; after all, she was a homicide detective, not the kind of privileged woman his mother continually tried to set him up with. She had a past, too, though he didn’t know what it was yet. </p><p>—</p><p>When Malcolm awoke, no longer brain fogged, he probed his memory, but instead of anxious embarrassment, he felt a sense of peace when he relived how it had felt to have Dani in his house. She had made him feel safer, which was almost unbelievable. Not quite Gil, but something like—the feeling of a friend, someone who took him as himself, which was the hardest and most important thing.</p><p>Malcolm knew better than to rush friendship or to expect people to take his issues and digest them all at once. But Dani had opened a crack in a door in his mind that he had kept closed for a long time.</p><p>Perhaps he could, someday, let a woman into his life, to sleep next to him, to live with him in the strange recesses of his peculiarities. He had always thought the blades and the blunt weapons inside, the strange things that littered his mind, would keep that from ever being a possibility. </p><p>Now, though he wasn’t yet convinced, a part of him wondered if he was wrong. A part of him thought for a moment, as he came out of sleep, about how comforting it might be to have an angel to come home to, someone who wouldn’t just help him into his restraints, but would stick around, would be unafraid of him, someone who might even want to—hold him, the thing he could never have. </p><p>Was this something to consider? Maybe he would address it in his next session with Dr. Le Deux. For the moment, he smiled when he recalled Dani’s gentleness, and he dared to think they might become friends—for real, the kind of person he wouldn’t mind being with, who might even like being around him.</p><p>Alone had, for ages, made him feel safe. Dani was beginning to make him wonder if something else could be better, if there was a togetherness that could heal instead of hurt. </p><p>Malcolm picked his phone up off his night table and took a risk. </p><p>"Bright?" She picked up.</p><p>"Yeah, I finally woke up. Wanted to say thanks for bringing me home safely."</p><p>"You’re welcome. I’ll see you back soon, but don’t come back until everything wears off."</p><p>"Yes, ma’am." He smiled to himself at her almost motherly tone.</p><p>"Bye, Bright. Feel better."</p><p>Maybe it would have seemed like a small risk to anyone else, but to Malcolm it was an accomplishment, calling someone when he didn’t have to, when he wasn’t obligated to call, and they weren’t obligated to answer. And Dani hadn’t minded. She’d just sounded concerned for him, which felt amazing and bewildering. His entire time at the FBI, he didn’t think anyone had actually been concerned for him as a human being. Being back with his family and Gil had been comforting in one way, but now, maybe the usually-locked door inside him would stay cracked open, and maybe he would even consider letting in someone new.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Lemon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Something made her keep that lemon-lime lollipop wrapper on her nightstand.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The scent of lemon verbena filled the bedroom. Dani sat on her grandmother’s old, oak bed, watching with fascination as her grandmother put on face powder and lipstick out of fancy compacts. </p><p>“Remember, honey, if you put things on your face or you wear perfume, you do it for yourself. You don’t do it for nobody else.”</p><p>Six months later, Dani didn’t hesitate to pass by the open casket and view her grandmother’s serenely beautiful face. The adults around her were surprised at her composure. She was sad, but she was also curious. Her grandmother obviously wasn’t there any more, not really. Seeing death didn’t scare her.</p><p>After the service, her aunt pressed a small bottle into Dani’s hand. “Mom didn’t have a lot to leave, but she wanted you to have this.” </p><p>Lemon verbena perfume, the perfume her grandmother wore for herself and nobody else. </p><p>—</p><p>Dani stopped wearing lemon perfume after junior prom—after she wore it and let Ryan talk her into things she didn’t want to do and take her further than she’d wanted to go. </p><p>“I’m sorry, Grandma,” she thought to herself that night. “I didn’t just wear it for me.”</p><p>Even after she realized it wasn’t her fault and stopped blaming herself, she didn’t like the scent any more.</p><p>—</p><p>The day they finally let Dani go home from rehab, she decided to clean her apartment to distract her mind from all of its questions—could she make it, could she put herself back together in Arroyo’s new division, and did she even know herself any more?</p><p>In the right back corner of her bottom drawer, she found a glass perfume bottle. Lemon verbena, her grandmother’s last bottle. Dani sat on the floor and cried, finally letting herself feel how lost she’d been and how much she wanted to be found.</p><p>She got up, put on makeup for the first time in ages, and went to the mall. “Something with notes of lemon,” she told the man at the fragrance counter. She sprayed on the sample and found herself again.</p><p>—</p><p>Long after she left the crime scene, Dani stared at the lollipop wrapper. Lemon-lime. He must have smelled her perfume and made the connection, but he couldn’t  possibly suspect what it meant, could he?</p><p>Dani had dated a lot of men, and the dealbreaker was usually the part of her that she kept for herself. They wanted to break into it, their small minds too insecure not to possess her completely. Ryan hadn’t been unusual. As an adult, she didn’t let them take her anywhere she didn’t want to go, and they couldn’t handle her strength. Dani wondered if it was possible to be known and not possessed, to find someone who could understand without trying to break. </p><p>Something made her keep that lemon-lime lollipop wrapper on her nightstand. When she looked at it, it reminded her of the grandmother she missed and a man she was getting to know. A man who somehow saw through her without making her feel threatened, who held people’s secrets without judgment. She was surprised to find that she liked thinking about him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Candy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Malcolm stood back for a little while, nervous. He was still new to the team, still scared that any minute he’d be pushed out. He took a deep breath, centering on the moment and remembering: lollipops. He had a handful of Dr. Le Deux’s candy to give out, and that meant he could square his shoulders and do his job.</p><p>—</p><p>Green apple. Malcolm tasted the sweet-sour flavor of the hard candy and closed his eyes, glad to have anything to focus on other than his mother’s crying and his house filled with police. His father’s face kept intruding on his mind, and he tried to shut it out, to do nothing but taste.</p><p>“I’ve got to do some paperwork. Would you like to sit in my car? It’s quieter there.” The nice cop was back. Malcolm nodded and followed him outside.</p><p>He sat on the passenger’s side, appreciating the escape from the cacophony inside. The police officer—Arroyo—opened the glove compartment. “There’s more candy in here if you want some.”</p><p>Malcolm only took one more piece of the hard, green candy. He didn’t want to be impolite. He saved it, knowing he would need it again when he went inside, the next time he wanted to use the taste to escape. </p><p>—</p><p>His mother took him to three psychiatrists. He told her Dr. Le Deux was his favorite. He didn’t tell her it was because Dr. Le Deux had lollipops and she let him eat them during their sessions. She was the only one he could bear to talk to about his father, because he could close his eyes and escape into the taste when he needed to. </p><p>It would take six years before he would talk to her without one, and even as an adult, he would grab one on his way in if it was a bad day. She never minded, and once she told him she liked having a signal that she needed to go easy.</p><p>—</p><p>At boarding school, Malcolm became known as the kid who always had candy. It was a good thing he had a stupidly huge allowance, or he would have run out. He wasn’t good at hiding his stash, and he was too willing to share.</p><p>In college, he got better at hiding it, but sometimes his girlfriends would dig out his stash and laugh. They thought he was a sugar addict. Nobody ever figured out the real reason. Not even in the FBI. Everybody was too focused on their own careers to care that he had a glove compartment filled with hard candy and a pantry in his apartment that would put a candy store to shame.</p><p>—</p><p>“Lemon-lime for you.” </p><p>He watched each of their reactions like a candy litmus test. Gil didn’t look that surprised. Malcolm suspected that he knew the reason, or at least was somewhere close to it. JT just looked weirded out, clearly filing it away as another weird Malcolm Bright quirk. Edrisa was confused, but no more than usual. He felt a little bit bad for adding another layer to her social discomfort, but, on the other hand, her joy at the connection outweighed the negative. </p><p>Dani knew. The instant she realized what flavor it was, her expression changed. She was the only one whose flavor came from a profile. He was scared she’d be upset, that it would seem too invasive and personal, but she just smiled at him.</p><p>He was pretty sure that just as candy was an escape for him, lemon meant something to her, even if he wasn't entirely sure what it was yet. He’d noticed her perfume on the first day, but it wasn’t just that. Most women put on perfume once in the morning and go, or maybe they have a routine where they put it back on after lunch or in the afternoon, the same time each day.</p><p>Dani was different. Dani would come in smelling faintly of lemons, but she would reapply her perfume if something negative happened. Once meant nothing, though he’d noticed it: An argument with JT, and she’d come out of the bathroom afterward with the scent of lemon more strongly around her. Twice was a coincidence: Gil had gotten onto her about a paperwork error, nothing major, but it had bothered her perfectionism—another part of the profile. She’d come over to show Malcolm something, and the lemon scent had been more pronounced. Three times was a pattern: She’d broken up with her boyfriend in the middle of the precinct, after he had unfortunately decided to show up and make a scene. She hadn’t taken Gil up on his offer of the rest of the day, but she had gone out for a fifteen minute break and come back with her perfume refreshed. </p><p>Malcolm had a working theory that lemon made Dani Powell feel strong when she was feeling vulnerable, the same way candy made him feel safer, so he’d taken a lemon-lime lollipop on the spur of the moment and given it to her.</p><p>It was a strange way to let her know that he both understood her and admired her strength, and he knew she probably wouldn’t understand it for what it was. But he was too shy to say more, and her smile made his gray morning. That was enough to go on as he opened his own lollipop and calmed himself with its taste.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Teammates</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“He’s…unconventional,” Dani said, thinking it was the best euphemism she could come up with for Bright’s way of handling, well, everything.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I’d like to know your thoughts on Bright as part of the team.”</p><p>Dani was across from Gil at the coffee shop he always used for his monthly one-on-one meetings with his team members. He could have met in his office, but somehow the cafe suited him more. She took a sip of her double espresso. “He’s the best profiler I’ve ever seen.”</p><p>“Yes,” Gil answered, “but that’s not what I asked.” </p><p>Dani smiled. She had known very well he wouldn’t settle for that answer, and she was stalling for time to figure out what she wanted to say. Two weeks in, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of being an adopted kid asked to comment on her newest brother. Gil never crossed unprofessional lines, but Dani had never worked with anyone who so specifically cultivated a family atmosphere in their professional sphere. </p><p>“Do you want him on this team for him or because you think we need him?” Dani asked her own question, secure in the knowledge that meetings with Gil were a two-way street. He asked hard questions, and he was willing to answer them. </p><p>“Both,” he answered readily, leaning forward. “We’ve need a dedicated profiler for over a year, and you know how hard it is to work with the one-offs who come in for one case. I’m not going to deny that I have ulterior motives. I like Bright, and I trust him. But he’s also qualified for the job.”</p><p>“He’s…unconventional,” Dani said, thinking it was the best euphemism she could come up with for Bright’s way of handling, well, everything. </p><p>“Have you ever met a profiler who wasn’t somewhat unusual?” Gil sat back in his chair, pushing up the sleeves of his oatmeal sweater.</p><p>Dani thought for a moment. She wasn’t nonplussed. It was typical for their meetings to consist of questions back and forth, pauses, challenges. Gil liked things out in the open before they became conflicts, and of all the bosses she’d had, he was the least insecure. </p><p>“One,” she finally answered, “that one who gave us the profile so wrong it set us back a month on the Red Wagon case.” She shrugged in surrender to the point.</p><p>Gil nodded. “The good ones are eccentric. It goes with the territory.”</p><p>Dani finally decided to cut to the chase. “Gil, I like him, but I’m worried about what happens to you if something happens to him, especially if it’s directly because of one of your cases. There’s a reason you’re not supposed to do this job with your actual family. And he’s not exactly risk-averse. Edrisa obviously likes him, JT can tolerate him, and I actually think he and I have complementary working styles. But you’re the one I’m worried about. The team can grow and change, but we can’t lose our leader.”</p><p>It took Gil a few moments to answer. This wasn’t unusual. He liked to weigh his words, and he wasn’t one to talk just for the sake of talking. Dani waited patiently, finishing her coffee and flagging down the waitress for another one. </p><p>“Dani, I’m not going to deny that I have an unusual relationship to him,” Gil finally began. “Your observations are right, as usual. But the thing is, Malcolm Bright is going to take risks, whether he’s here or across the country. I’m not going to be able stop him, but I’d like to see what he’s doing and give that nervous energy something to focus on.”</p><p>“And if we lose him?” Dani pressed further.</p><p>“We all know the risks of the job, and Bright is an adult,” Gil said. “I’ll do my best to protect him like I would any member of the team. Losing any of you would be devastating, but we’ve all lost colleagues and friends before. And we all kept going.”</p><p>Dani watched Gil closely, finally satisfied that he was at least thinking about the worst-case possibilities, even if he hadn’t entirely resolved the issue. She could press even more, push on the fact that he obviously thought of Bright like a son, but she let it go for the time being.</p><p>“Then I’ll just say, he’s an asset to the team,” Dani replied, with no sarcasm. “On top of his skills, he’s hard not to like.”</p><p>Dani did not tell Gil that in a matter of weeks, Malcolm Bright had completely turned upside-down her stereotypes and prejudices about rich guys who drove fast cars and wore suits from designer brands. She did not find it relevant to say that he was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen. And she definitely did not feel the need to tell Gil that Malcolm’s gentleness threatened to disarm her far more than aggression would have. Irrelevant personal details.</p><p>—-</p><p>“You got a thumbs up from the rest of the team today.”</p><p>Malcolm looked up, surprised, from where he was mixing drinks in his kitchen. “Let me hypothesize: Edrisa likes me, JT barely tolerates me but is willing to live with it for the good of the team, and Dani—is harder to predict.”</p><p>“Dani likes you,” Gil supplied. “She’s worried that I’m too attached to you for it to be safe for us to work together.”</p><p>“Not an unfounded worry.” Malcolm handed Gil a drink and walked with him to the sofa. “I would probably say the same thing if someone consulted me about a similar situation.”</p><p>Gil shook his head. “You kids worry too much. I didn’t waste time worrying about my sergeant when I was your age.”</p><p>“That’s because she wasn’t you,” Malcolm rejoined, looking over at him intently. “This team needs you, personally as well as professionally.”</p><p>“Just make sure you take care of yourself, kid,” Gil said. “Dani has excellent self-perseveration instincts. You I’m not so sure about. Don’t waste all that worry on me.”</p><p>“Noted,” Malcolm answered.</p><p>“Powell said she thinks the two of you work together well,” Gil added. “Might explore that more  on cases in the future if you’re open to it.”</p><p>“I’m open to it.” Of course he was open to it. Malcolm suppressed his goofy grin. </p><p>It was early days, and Malcolm hadn’t had a close friend in years. He knew that Dani had trust issues that impacted every decision and relationship she entered into. At the same time, he dared to let himself hope that they might be able to bridge the gap to become something beyond professional acquaintances. Connection. He remembered waking up in her arms on the precinct floor, and he knew it would be worth it, no matter how hard it might be to earn her trust.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. The Shared Frequency</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>She assessed the situation, the threat and the potential benefits. This wasn't going to work if she didn't let him help. She had years of knowing what worked and what didn't. She had to trust, to temporarily let her guard down. Dani took a deep breath. At any rate, it would be better than relapsing.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dani clicked through the evidence file quickly. She was looking at cold cases, trying to match the MO of their latest killer, about to click off. Another dud. A killer who liked to imprison his victims ahead of time, nothing like their target.</p><p>That's when she saw the photo. It wasn't even gruesome. It was of the final victim, who had been found alive. Alive and in an enclosed space barely big enough for her. Claustrophobic.</p><p>Shallow breaths, sweating. Dani clicked off as fast as she could. Drat, she thought. She was glad there was nobody in the hallway. She went outside, behind the building, and sank to the ground, sitting with her back to the wall.</p><p>1-2-3-4-5. She counted mentally, forcing herself to breathe more slowly. She hadn't had a full-blown panic attack in a couple of months. As usual, feeling the symptoms begin brought bad memories to her mind, flashbacks of how helpless she'd felt when her undercover job had gone south, how scared she'd been, how it had seemed like the walls were closing in on her.</p><p>"Are you okay?" She hadn't known Bright that long, and she inwardly cursed at the fact that anyone had decided use the back entrance.</p><p>"Yeah," she said. "I think I had some bad food at lunch. Stomachache." It was a dumb lie, and she had no idea if he believed her, but she tried to conceal her agitation as much as possible, and he went back inside without prying further.</p><p>Dani did breathing exercises, then visualization. Somehow it seemed like panic attacks after a long time were always the worst ones, or maybe the time in between made her forget how bad they could really be.</p><p>Finally, ten minutes later, she got up shakily and went back inside. In the bottom of her purse, she had a bottle. She took out the one remaining pill and went into the bathroom, where she swallowed it with a little water. It was a rescue dose. The psychiatrist wouldn't prescribe more than a few at a time at the lowest dose possible because of her previous issues, and she didn't particularly like taking them. But she needed to recover quickly and keep doing her job.</p><p>An hour later, the team met about the case. Bright didn't act weird (well, any weirder than usual), and nobody else seemed to know anything had happened, so Dani felt relieved. The last thing she wanted was for the team to think she was compromised or unfit to work.</p><p>—</p><p>5:30 p.m. It was a regular day. There were no leads to run down. Unfortunate, but it meant Gil sent everyone home at the normal time, and Dani was back to her apartment strangely early. She could have gone out, but she felt tired, a feeling she recognized as the aftermath of her panic from earlier, like an anxiety hangover.</p><p>She took a nap, but it was too early for her to stay asleep, and she woke up hungry at 9:00. She felt a little better, so she ordered in Chinese food and started watching Youtube videos. Something mindless.</p><p>Unfortunately, being triggered once made it easier to be triggered again in a short amount of time. She clicked onto a stupid-looking video on the trending page, and it turned out to be a prank where someone was locked into a closet.</p><p>Dani practically threw her phone across the room, wishing she could throw memories out of her head. She forced herself to go through her mental calm down exercises, but it didn't seem to work. Her mind took its dark journey from the trigger all the way back to the terror of being undercover.</p><p>By the time she checked, two hours had gone by, lost to panic. It was nearly midnight. She fumbled for her purse, but then it dawned on her—she was out of medication. The psychiatrist would give her more, but it was nearly midnight, and she would simply get his answering service, which would tell her to wait until morning or go to the hospital if it was an emergency.</p><p>One block down, alley on the right. Three blocks west, bodega. One mile north, apartments. Dani knew every immediate place in the area where drugs were sold, and her mind began to torture her with them. She could go to any of them, pay, and feel calmness course through her in minutes. She could give in.</p><p>Dani picked up her phone and quickly scrolled through her contact list. Brianna, her emergency support for danger nights, wouldn't mind a call at midnight. The problem was, Brianna was in the hospital having her first child after a problem pregnancy. Her backup, Kirk, was in the military, and he'd been deployed to the Middle East a couple of weeks before.</p><p>The ironic thing was, they'd discussed it. Brianna had been concerned about leaving her without someone as a fallback for even a few days, but Dani hadn't had a danger night in over six months. Before that one, it had been nearly a year. Neither of them had been able to imagine that anything would happen.</p><p>Dani tried to breathe more slowly, to push away the craving. She scrolled her contact list. J.T. would be home with his family. Gil was risky. He knew her history, but that didn't mean she wanted him to see a daily struggle that might tempt him to think she was too erratic for duty. Edrisa? She wouldn't judge, but Dani had no idea if she would know how to help. She had other contacts, but not close friends, and her family was far away. Calling would just scare them to death and do nothing for her.</p><p>Bright.</p><p>He was the newest entry in her contact list. He was also the one who had seen her distress during the day. She did not want to call someone she still felt like she hardly knew, but she was growing increasingly fearful of her own ability to fight her out-of-control brain.</p><p>"Bright?"</p><p>"Powell?" He picked up.</p><p>"Yeah, uh, sorry to wake you up."</p><p>"I'm not sleeping."</p><p>"Can—would you come over to my place?" She knew it sounded weird. She spent a split second wondering if she could play it off as asking him to just hang out. But it was midnight, and the idea was idiotic.</p><p>"What's wrong?" He instantly sounded concerned.</p><p>Dani chose the truth, not seeing any way to get around it. "I had a tough day, and I'm afraid I'm going to use."</p><p>"I'll be right there," he immediately replied. "Text me the address." Dani did.</p><p>"I got it," Bright added, "but don't go. We're going to stay on the line. I'll request a taxi by app. Don't you dare hang up."</p><p>"I'm here," she said.</p><p>"Good. Now, are you hot or cold?" Dani thought about it. She hadn't noticed or thought about her physical comfort in hours.</p><p>"I'm cold."</p><p>"What part of your body?"</p><p>"My shoulders and my feet."</p><p>"Go put on socks and a sweater."</p><p>"Okay," she said, taking the phone with her into her bedroom.</p><p>"Which ones are you getting?" Bright asked.</p><p>"Gray socks and a purple hoodie," she answers, setting the phone down so she could put them on.</p><p>"How do you feel now?"</p><p>"Warmer."</p><p>"Dani, are you hungry or thirsty?"</p><p>It took a few seconds for her to figure it out. "Thirsty. I ate earlier."</p><p>"Go into the kitchen and get a drink. Whatever you want."</p><p>"Tea," she answered, and she went to put the kettle on.</p><p>"I'll be there in ten minutes," he updated. "My driver's name is Mario, and he says he can get me there before 12:30."</p><p>"Okay," Dani answered. "Thank you."</p><p>"What kind of tea are you having?"</p><p>"Earl Grey. My grandmother used to make it for me."</p><p>"That's a good choice. What was your grandmother like?"</p><p>"Elegant," Dani answered, "and strong and independent."</p><p>"Like you," Bright said.</p><p>Dani put the teabag into the heated water. Decaffeinated so it didn't heighten her anxiety.</p><p>"Now I'm stopped at a light," Bright said, "and there's a guy out here yelling about the end of days. Too bad he didn't come to the precinct yesterday when Gil made us do that file reorganization. I was wishing for the end of days in the middle of the paperwork."</p><p>Dani laughed. She couldn't help herself. "I'm making you a cup of tea for when you get here," she offered.</p><p>"Great, I love tea," he answered. "My mother used to make it for me at night. Chamomile. Never actually helped me sleep, but there was something comforting about it. She would always sit with me while I drank it."</p><p>"My family all went for coffee. I guess that's why I decided I liked tea, to be different. Gotta have coffee for work, but tea is for after hours."</p><p>"Mario's GPS says we're close," Bright updated. "I'll see you very soon. How does your tea taste?"</p><p>"Good," she answered. "Bergamot and lemon. I like lemon, but you know that."</p><p>"Theorized it," he answered. "But I wasn't sure if it was just scent or also taste."</p><p>"Both," she answered.</p><p>"We're almost to your building," he said after a moment. "Get ready to buzz me in."</p><p>Dani could hardly believe she'd made it. The wait for her support person to get to her was always the hardest part. Neither of the other two had ever kept her on the phone the way Malcolm did.</p><p>"I'm here." Suddenly she was nervous, but she buzzed him in.</p><p>She had never seen him casual. His hair was without gel, and he was wearing sweatpants and a white t-shirt, so she could see the muscles his suits only hinted at. She might not be at her best, but that didn't mean she had no eyes.</p><p>"I'm sorry I lied to you earlier," she blurted. "I—don't like people at work to see this side of me if I can help it."</p><p>Bright nodded. "I get it, but you could have told me you were having a tough time. No judgment."</p><p>Dani felt awkward, but maybe that was good. It definitely pulled her into the moment, which of course had been the purpose of all of his questions on the phone, too. To anchor her to her physical feelings in the present and avoid dissociation. He might usually be observing criminal behavior, but he was a psychologist. That meant that at some point he'd had to learn the normal things, too. She was grateful that he was good at it.</p><p>"What can I do?" he asked simply, standing at the door of her apartment. "If you have somebody who usually does this, just tell me what they do, and I'll do that. No shame. You've put me to bed in restraints and taken care of me when I was having a sleep terror. I'm just here to do what's needed. Try not to see me, if it helps, just think of me as a random person who's here for you."</p><p>Dani looked at him, not talking for a few seconds, weighing how much she could actually ask him to do. In her desperation, she hadn't actually thought through the implications of asking him to be Brianna or Kirk, who knew the routine, a routine that would require things of Bright that she was horribly embarrassed to ask for.</p><p>"Uh, here's the tea," she said, breaking the tension by going to the kitchen and getting his mug.</p><p>"Thank you," he answered.</p><p>"Let's watch television," Dani said. Technically, that was what usually came next. Bright said down with her on the opposite end of the couch, and she turned on Ally McBeal reruns. Comfort TV that reminded her of her teenaged years.</p><p>Dani fidgeted. She tried to focus on the simplistic storyline, but she was still anxious, still feeling the effects of the day. Still thinking about how to slip out and go down to the alley without Bright knowing what she was doing. This—wasn't good. Her brain was still going too fast.</p><p>"Are you okay?" Bright asked after a few minutes. "I've never done this for anyone, but you definitely don't seem calmer. Is—is my being here making it worse?"</p><p>"It's not that," Dani said. "I—need physical contact. It—helps shut my brain off. I'm sorry."</p><p>Bright nodded, as if this made perfect sense to him. "It's okay. What do you want me to do, Dani?"</p><p>She assessed the situation, the threat and the potential benefits. This wasn't going to work if she didn't let him help. She had years of knowing what worked and what didn't. She had to trust, to temporarily let her guard down. Dani took a deep breath. At any rate, it would be better than relapsing.</p><p>Dani moved closer to Bright on the couch, and he immediately responded by putting his arm around her, which felt surprisingly strong. She settled until she was leaning into him, with her head tucked into the spot between his shoulder and neck. Comfortable.</p><p>With one click of the remote, Ally McBeal was back on. Dani felt her breathing start to even out. The awkwardness was outweighed by the immediate comfort. It worked, like it always did. Human contact started to sort out her synapses, and for the first time all evening, she felt herself actually begin to relax.</p><p>"Is this better?" Bright asked as one episode ended and another began. "You seem calmer."</p><p>"Yeah, this is definitely better," she answered, closing her eyes. "I'm sorry, Bright. I know this is weird."</p><p>Malcolm used his right hand, the one not holding her, to brush her hair off her face. "It's okay. We're friends. You were there when I had my sleep terror. This is the least I could do." He smiled, and Dani couldn't help smiling back.</p><p>An hour passed, and Dani began to feel exhaustion overtake her. Bright didn't let go of her, and his hands didn't wander or try anything weird. He just held her as she finally calmed down and felt her mind return to its baseline, intrusive thoughts receding. "I think I can sleep," she said after a while.</p><p>"Good," Bright said. "I'll tuck you in and doze out here." She knew, even as he said it, that he would never let himself fall asleep. He was giving up his night for her.</p><p>Dani would later wonder why she hadn't been more hesitant to let him into her bedroom. For now, she simply led the way, falling into bed as soon as she got there. Bright pulled her duvet over her and smiled down at her. "Good night, Dani. I'll be just out there if you wake up and need me."</p><p>Sometimes, anxiety would return in the night, but Dani was so exhausted after the day she'd had that she fell into a deep sleep and didn't wake up for several hours. By the time she did, light was starting to stream in through her bedroom window, and she smelled something cooking.</p><p>"Bright?" She got up and wondered into the living room, rubbing her eyes.</p><p>"Breakfast is coming up," he answered from the kitchen. "About half an hour, if you want to get ready." Dani was too sleepy to fully assimilate this, so she went for a shower and dressed for work, glad to feel that she didn't have too much of the residual sluggish feeling anxiety could sometimes leave behind.</p><p>When she emerged, Dani found her kitchen table set with toast, eggs, bacon, and sausage. "Wow," she said. "This is—something."</p><p>Bright laughed. "I plumbed the depths of your freezer. I know you don't normally eat breakfast, but I figured you could use it after your night." He was even more rumpled than the night before, his hair falling over his eyes and his shirt wrinkled from his hours on the sofa.</p><p>"Thank you," she said, sitting down. "My mother would be proud of your breakfast skills."</p><p>Bright sat across from her, and the atmosphere was strangely peaceful. Dani had been half afraid that when she came out of the bathroom the spell would be broken and she would feel awkward with him again. That wasn't how it felt at all, and Dani began to think it never would be again, that something had irrevocably shifted and changed.</p><p>"I really appreciate you coming," she said sincerely. "You have to know I would never have asked you if I hadn't practically been out of my mind."</p><p>"I know," he answered in between bites of toast. "But I'm glad I could help."</p><p>"You actually are," Dani answered. "That's not something I'm used to."</p><p>"Get used to it," he said, smiling again. "And don't worry. Everything that happened here stays here. You did that for me, and I'll do it for you." He turned the full force of his blue eyes on her.</p><p>"Thank you," she said. Two words, but they said everything.</p><p>Bright left right after breakfast, and Dani knew she would see him again in a couple of hours, at the status meeting with Gil and J.T. Would it be different than before? Maybe, but not different in a bad way. Bright had seen her at her most vulnerable, and, strangely, she wasn't embarrassed.</p><p>Bright had held onto her in the middle of a sleep terror, and she had held onto him during a danger night. Neither of those things were normal occurrences in Dani's life, but they had both felt exactly right at the time. As much as she struggled to trust, it seemed part of her brain knew how to bypass her reservations when it mattered most.</p><p>Blue eyes had been the last thing before she'd fallen asleep. Light blue eyes that made her feel seen and cared for. She saw them in her mind as she left her apartment to go to work, and it was the kind of intrusive thought she didn't mind at all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This chapter is inspired by Aurora Perrineau, who said that the source of Dani's and Malcolm's connection is that they both suffer from a "hum of anxiety" and that they trust each other because they meet through this shared frequency.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Prufrock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets," Dani answered, "the muttering retreats of restless nights." Malcolm stopped typing altogether and looked at her, slightly surprised.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Let us go then, you and I,</p><p>When the evening is spread out against the sky</p><p>Like a patient etherized upon a table;</p><p>Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,</p><p>The muttering retreats</p><p>Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels</p><p>And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:</p><p>Streets that follow like a tedious argument</p><p>Of insidious intent</p><p>To lead you to an overwhelming question ...</p><p>Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"</p><p>Let us go and make our visit.</p><p>—T.S. Eliot</p><p>"I don't know what you said to JT, but it worked." Malcolm looked up from his computer to find Dani in the doorway.</p><p>"I told him I respect cops because a cop saved my life." He answered her unspoken question readily, still clicking keys, typing his final assessment of the LSD disasters that had led to the unhinging of students and professor.</p><p>"A Catch-22," Dani observed quietly. "JT doesn't like to feel like people have him figured out, but to connect with him you have to try to figure him out, which ticks him off. Took me over a year."</p><p>"Schrodinger's colleague," Malcolm echoed. "But, with JT, once you're in, you're in. He doesn't mess around. Other people—you get partway in, and then you're back out again. People like you and me."</p><p>"You hungry?" Dani left the observation hanging, which was her way of dealing with most things she didn't want to discuss.</p><p>"No," said Malcolm, "but you are, and I could use a coffee."</p><p>Dani made a delivery order and took her seat in his office. He liked having her there. He could have pointed out that her shift was finished and that she could have gone home, but he didn't. After all, there were things he also didn't know how to discuss.</p><p>"How have you been since the other night?" Malcolm asked, still typing his report, glad that he could multitask. They hadn't talked about that strange night in Dani's apartment, but Malcolm didn't think she would mind. She was the kind of person who, once she had decided she trusted him enough to call him for help, wouldn't mind acknowledging it afterward.</p><p>"Fine, I think," she answered honestly, her posture relaxed. "I told my therapist and got a lecture about assuming invincibility and not having safety nets in place."</p><p>Malcolm looked over from his computer screen and smiled at her. "You had an option, and you knew it. It just took a pressurized situation for you to test it out."</p><p>"That's weird," she replied, "when you switch to talking about yourself in the third person, like an inanimate object. That's hard to get used to."</p><p>"Like a patient etherized upon a table," he mumbled.</p><p>"Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets," Dani answered, "the muttering retreats of restless nights." Malcolm stopped typing altogether and looked at her, slightly surprised.</p><p>"I always thought that first stanza sounded like police work," she explained. "'Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent.' The Bronx on a bad night?"</p><p>Malcolm laughed, then returned to his interminable report, which he was now feeling might never be finished. "'I have seen the moments of my greatness flicker.' I wrote a paper on that in college, on how many serial killers' psychological characteristics can be found in J. Alfred Prufrock. So much longing, so much self-aggrandizement, so many feelings of being ineffective, yet with a sense of destiny unfulfilled. He's a Willy Loman who wants to be Hamlet."</p><p>"Like Martin," Dani answered, cutting straight to the chase.</p><p>"Like my father," Malcolm echoed, "a man who needed to prove he wasn't powerless by overpowering others. Ironically, he showed how inadequate he felt through his need to kill. He knows it, too. He'll never be rid of it, no matter how much he tries to act proud of what he did, sitting over there in his little box." Malcolm squeezed his hand, hard, feeling the tremor threatening to start.</p><p>Dani reached over and put her hand over his, distracting him so much the shaking never began. "The food's almost here. I'll go meet them at the door." She left quickly, leaving him staring after her, slightly nonplussed.</p><p>As Malcolm returned to his document, trying again to close out his analysis of one his heroes turning out to be the villain, it occurred to him to wonder what he was in the middle of with Dani Powell. It didn't seem much like an average friendship, the way T.S. Eliot's poem had never seemed much like a love song. Shared with her, somehow everything felt different.</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Debriefing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"So, what do you think of our teamwork, Dr. Bright?" She figured she owed it to Gil to at least broach the subject he'd ordered them to cover especially after going uncharacteristically rogue during the investigation.</p><p>"Dr. Bright," he repeated. "Weird. Never say it again." He opened an oven that was a brand Dani had never heard of and put the pizza inside. Then, he turned and looked her in the eyes. "We're a balance. When it comes to action, you look, and I leap. Interpersonally, it can be the other way around. You trust your gut, and I need more. We make a balanced investigative unit.</p>
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    <p>"I seriously thought you already knew, ages ago." Dani sat in Malcolm Bright's kitchen, watching him make pizza from scratch. Gil had told them to debrief—to discuss the Estime case and their teamwork. He hadn't said they had to do it in the office. Dani couldn't think of any good reason to decline Bright's invitation to do it at his place, with dinner thrown in, so she'd said yes and been rewarded with a million-watt smile.</p><p>"Nope," he answered, rolling out dough with energy. "Nothing beyond some general guesses from my observations. I didn't know details."</p><p>Dani shook her head. "Then why on earth did you come over when I called about my danger night?"</p><p>Malcolm stopped rolling and turned around to face her. "You said you were afraid you were going to use; I didn't need to know how or why to know that you needed help from a friend." He went back to the task at hand.</p><p>Dani stayed quiet for a while, processing the information that had been rattling around in her head for a couple of days. "You didn't even ask me when you got to my place. Weren't you curious?"</p><p>"Of course I was," he confirmed. "But you weren't in any condition to discuss it then, and I figured you'd tell me when you were ready."</p><p>"That was—really decent of you, Bright."</p><p>Malcolm passed by on his way to the refrigerator and locked eyes with her, grinning. "I do have my moments, Powell."</p><p>"I figured Gil would have filled in any details you hadn't figured out about us, right from the beginning, or you could have looked us up in the police system, and nobody would have batted an eye."</p><p>Tomato sauce spreading paused for a moment, and Bright answered, "Off limits. When it comes to friends, I don't go prying into things I can't deduce or that they don't tell me. Most people already dislike feeling like somebody knows more about them than they're intentionally telling. I can't really help that part, but at least I can keep from giving myself an unfair advantage. I guess you could call it a code. I know I may make you crazy trying to figure you out, but I won't look you up."</p><p>"Yet everybody knows your background," Dani answered, feeling the irony.</p><p>"Funny, isn't it," Bright agreed, not sounding amused at all. "People resent me for making deductions based on what I observe in their behavior, but as soon as anyone finds out who my father is, it's fair game to decide who I am, even if they don't know me at all."</p><p>"That sucks," Dani said, not sure what else anyone could add to the bleak truth.</p><p>"Yes, it does." Malcolm handed her a glass of red wine and clinked his own with hers. "Gil didn't ask for a written report of this meeting."</p><p>"Nope," Dani agreed, taking a sip. "Just said we had to have it."</p><p>"Do you like mushrooms?" Malcolm was past the cheese layer and on to toppings.</p><p>"Sure," said Dani. "I trust you. You obviously know what you're doing." She gestured to the unfinished pizza, which to her eyes already looked appetizing.</p><p>"My high school had pretty advanced culinary classes," Malcolm answered. "It's not a hobby, but I can do it."</p><p>"Oh yeah, rich kid school," Dani nodded.</p><p>"Your reverse snobbery is noted," Malcom said, his mouth turning up at the corners.</p><p>"Sorry," Dani replied, meaning it. "I just—I really can't imagine the world you grew up in."</p><p>"Likewise," he acknowledged. "I'm not going to say something stupid about it being the same world. I know what you mean."</p><p>Dani watched in fascination as Malcolm grated white truffle over the pizza, knowing as a result of case research she'd once conducted that white truffle was worth thousands of dollars a pound. She had no idea where a home chef would even get it.</p><p>"So, what do you think of our teamwork, Dr. Bright?" She figured she owed it to Gil to at least broach the subject he'd ordered them to cover especially after going uncharacteristically rogue during the investigation.</p><p>"Dr. Bright," he repeated. "Weird. Never say it again." He opened an oven that was a brand Dani had never heard of and put the pizza inside. Then, he turned and looked her in the eyes. "We're a balance. When it comes to action, you look, and I leap. Interpersonally, it can be the other way around. You trust your gut, and I need more. We make a balanced investigative unit.</p><p>The sudden shift from flippant to deadly serious didn't surprise Dani that much. She was used to Bright's sudden changes. Or maybe she was beginning to realize that the gravitas was always lurking just below the surface.</p><p>"I agree," she said simply. "It works, like you said. We also—both have trust issues that keep us from stepping on each other's toes too much."</p><p>"You're not a bad profiler yourself," Malcolm said, sitting down next to her with his glass to wait for the pizza to bake.</p><p>"I know," Dani answered calmly. "I was never bad at it, but Gil taught me a lot."</p><p>"Likewise," Malcolm answered. "Since I had the privilege of finding out something about you during the case, here's something about me: You might have already guessed it, but Gil is the one who inspired me to become a profiler."</p><p>"How old were you?"</p><p>"Ten, right after my dad was arrested. He—Gil always seemed to be in control, because he knew what people were thinking, if they were lying, what they might do. It seemed to me like he could read minds. I wanted to do it, too, so I could be in control."</p><p>"That makes sense," Dani said. "When I was in high school, my science teacher suggested that I become a profiler, but I couldn't handle the thought of so much school and then paperwork. I wanted to get out into the field faster and do the legwork. Of course, you don't stay in the office as much as most profilers we've had."</p><p>Malcolm shook his head. "Nope. That's what I liked about the FBI—it was busy. I told Gil when I came back that I could only do this if it had a pretty big field component to it. I need—stimulation to keep my mind occupied and not wandering."</p><p>"That's very Sherlock Holmes of you," Dani teased. "But what's your seven-per-cent solution?"</p><p>"Pain," he answered. "Sensation, really, like when you punched me, not that I remember it. The cases keep me connected to the world, to reality. If I don't have one, I find myself in need of ways to ground myself and feel real again, connected to the here and now so I don't get lost in the past."</p><p>"What about other types of sensation?" Dani dared to continue the subject. It was an odd topic, but Malcolm Bright was an unusual man, and she was not feeling uncomfortable.</p><p>"What other types of sensation do you mean?" he asked, and she felt like he was planning to assess her through her answer.</p><p>"Well, you know physical contact helps me not use. What about for you? Pain is one way to know you're alive, but what about hugging, kissing, holding hands? There are other sensations just as powerful as pain."</p><p>"But those are a lot scarier, Detective," he answered. "You have to trust someone enough to let them help with those." Dani wished it didn't make so much sense to her that someone could find love more frightening than pain, but she knew exactly what he meant.</p><p>"I know," she said. "I wonder sometimes what it's like to be Gil or Edrisa."</p><p>"Two people with absolutely nothing in common, other than the superhuman ability to love other people with fearless abandon," Malcolm said.</p><p>"Exactly," Dani replied, glad that he''d understood her drift.</p><p>"When I was a kid—I didn't sleep much better than now. I never told Gil, but sometimes, when he hugged me, I could sleep better that night. That's another thing about me, Powell. You're quite the interrogator." He laughed.</p><p>"I know what I'm doing," she said, smiling at him. "You talk when your mind is engaged—open-ended exploration of topics. Nothing keeping conversation too tethered. Few direct questions."</p><p>"That's true," he said, not seeming to mind her description at all.</p><p>Just then, the pizza finished, and Dani watched as Malcolm took it out of the oven, delighted to see it bubbling in delicious decadence. "I'm hungry," she said.</p><p>"Me, too, but it needs a few minutes to cool," Malcolm said. He sat down again. "You have a better relationship with direct questions than I do. How are you doing since the end of the case? It was intense."</p><p>"I'm okay," she answered, as a sly smile overtook her face. "Getting to deck you to sleep was definitely a highlight."</p><p>Malcolm laughed but turned serious quickly. "You're bringing that up again because you're uncomfortable, Powell. You still feel a little bit guilty. Don't. You did what you had to do to keep us both safe in the moment. It's not like you attacked me unprovoked. Considering the amount of drugs I was on, you might have saved my life. I have no idea what I might have done."</p><p>"You wouldn't have done the same thing to me," she countered, not liking quite how much he had her pegged.</p><p>"No, probably not," he agreed, "but that doesn't mean it was the wrong thing to do. We're a good team because we take alternate routes to get to the same place."</p><p>"Maybe so," she agreed reluctantly.</p><p>Thankfully, her host broke the tension by getting up and serving her a generous slice of pizza and refilling her drink. "This is literally amazing, Bright," she said after a couple of bites.</p><p>"Thanks," he said un-ironically. "Jackie—GIl's wife—always said I had the touch with pizza."</p><p>"I'm jealous that you knew her," Dani admitted between chewing. "I would have liked to know the woman Gil loved. She must have been wonderful."</p><p>"She was," Malcolm answered. "As cheesy as this sounds, they were the couple who made me believe it might be possible to make it work—some day."</p><p>Dani smiled. "You deserve to have that."</p><p>Bright's smile at her across the table was some of adult Malcolm mixed with child Malcolm, and she felt a tug inside her. She wanted to be trustworthy, to show that kid looking out of the man's eyes that he could continue to hope and that it could be worth it.</p>
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<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Split Second</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Malcolm smiled. “Thank you, Detective Powell. That means a lot.” In response, Dani reached out and held his hand—for a split second, so fast you could have almost missed it.</p>
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    <p>“Sorry,” was the first word out of Dani’s mouth as she entered the break room. She went to the cabinet and pulled out her secret stash of Snickers bars from behind the coffee cans. </p><p>“Huh? What for?” Malcolm looked up from his London Fog and blinked, trying to pull his mind from its recesses and remember if there was a reason for Powell to be apologizing.</p><p>“Just—Isaac being the killer. I know that’s not what you were hoping.” She handed him one of her candy bars, and he took it. It was definitely a candy day.</p><p>“Solved is better than not solved,” he answered, “and at least we’re intervening early. With his issues, he could have become a serial killer.”</p><p>Dani sat across from Malcolm at the break room table. “I’m glad you were here. Some of the profilers we had before—it’s like they were beyond caring. It means a lot that you still see the humanity in the perpetrators.”</p><p>“It’s the profiler’s irony,” he answered. “The more ugliness you see, the harder it is to see people and not just pathologies. But it’s the humanity—the little things that make them who they are—that helps you catch them. Compassion is tough, but it makes us good at the job.”</p><p>“Makes it harder to sleep at night, though,” Dani added.</p><p>Malcolm laughed. “Not much going for me there anyway.”</p><p>“Can I ask you something?” Dani gave him a serious glance.</p><p>“Anything.”</p><p>“How did you cope—people all your life must have treated you weirdly because of your dad. It’s like—Isaac’s mom is always going to be the mother of a killer. I already saw how people started treating her as soon as the truth came out, even though it’s not her fault. I’ve just never known anyone personally before.”</p><p>Malcolm nodded. “I guess it’s a little like having your dad be a famous actor, but instead of everyone expecting you to have talent, they automatically think you’re crazy—or evil. I decided to change my name when I went to high school, but it didn’t work. People always found out.”</p><p>“I guess some people lean into it, right?” Dani put in. “Make money from books, do a podcast. I’m not judging. You’re just—different.”</p><p>Malcolm smiled at her. “Don’t be nervous. I hate when people are uncomfortable talking about it. I think that’s why they write the books and go on TV. They—we—just want to feel like somebody sees us and isn’t scared to be around us or tiptoeing around the elephant in the room for our whole lives.”</p><p>Dani nodded. “So you cope however you can, since you can’t get away.”</p><p>“Some of us try to atone by solving other people’s murders,” Malcolm said. </p><p>“I won’t pretend I get it,” Dani answered, “but I respect it.”</p><p>Malcolm smiled again. “Thank you, Detective Powell. That means a lot.” In response, Dani reached out and held his hand—for a split second, so fast you could have almost missed it. </p><p>One split second, except Malcolm Bright couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the day.</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Punchline</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Dani could not believe the matter-of-fact way he said it, stringing together horrible words as if they were as normal as the blue sky.</p><p>“I honestly have no idea what to say to that,” she answered, “except I’m sorry.”</p>
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    <p>Bright was not the same when he emerged from Purgatory. Dani listened to his descriptions of what went on with Paul Lazar with unobtrusive concentration. Malcolm held the precinct spellbound with his stories, his bandaged hand a brutal object lesson. The others heard what he said so loudly that they missed what he didn’t say. </p><p>Dani cared. She admitted it to herself, not one to see the point in willful self-deception. She’d realized it at the point when everyone on the team started to doubt they would ever find Malcolm alive. None of them wanted to say it, but they all felt it. To Dani’s surprise, it made her insides clench like an invisible hand was squeezing her in a vice grip. She respected all of her colleagues, would have been sorry to lose any of them, but the thought of their losses did not threaten to break her. This time, that threat was real.</p><p>The surprising part was, Dani hadn’t intentionally let Bright into the tiny circle of people she deeply cared about. He’d snuck in without her realizing it, and by the time it dawned on her, he lived there by the claim of squatter’s rights. She couldn’t help herself.</p><p>“And then, I had to decide if I had what it took to get out of there.” Dani stood in the hallway, listening to Bright tell his story once again to a group of amazed uniform police. And, once again, Dani had the overwhelming impression that he wasn’t telling the whole story. </p><p>“Hey, Bright?” She took her chance as the day started to wind down.</p><p>“Yeah?” He smiled across the room at her, eyes crinkling. She breathed deeply as she came closer to the desk, stalling for time. </p><p>“I-um,” she sat down opposite him, trying to feel less awkward. “Listen,” she finally began in earnest, “you don’t have to tell me what went down with Lazar. You don’t have to tell anybody. I know that. But I’m getting the feeling there’s more. The way you tell the story, it’s like you’re omitting the punchline.” She pressed the toe of her shoe into the floor and avoided looking at Bright.</p><p>“I think you know me very well, Officer Powell,” she finally heard him answer, and she looked up to meet his quizzical gaze. “I’ll tell you, but it’s not a fun thing to know about.” </p><p>“I can handle it,” she replied quickly, wanting to reassure him. “But only if you want to tell me. I’m not trying to make it worse.”</p><p>“Lazar said the Surgeon planned to kill me, and Dr. Whitly confirmed it.”</p><p>Dani could not believe the matter-of-fact way he said it, stringing together horrible words as if they were as normal as the blue sky.</p><p>“I honestly have no idea what to say to that,” she answered, “except I’m sorry.”</p><p>Bright nodded. “It’s an experience very few people can understand, and, to answer your unspoken question, no, I’m not okay. But—it felt good to tell you. That part is surprising.”</p><p>“You will be okay.” Dani wasn’t the kind of person to make empty promises or inspirational platitudes. This was different. She willed the steel in her own resolve to enter him.</p><p>Bright closed his eyes for a long moment and then opened them again. “I know I will. I have—friends.”</p><p>“People who care about you—a lot,” Dani echoed softly. “Please—let us help.”</p><p>“Dani, I couldn’t keep going if you weren’t already.” This time, Bright reached for her hand, and she held it tightly like she was holding him, half wishing he would let her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I know this is going slowly. We’re still in Season 1 here, and amazing things are happening in Season 2. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover this show until right before S2 started, so I’m giving myself time to actually find the threads of this relationship naturally. I’m not willing to let go of the beauty of this journey just to get there faster.</p>
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